Of complaint channels and drama laden trips

A friend casually referred to the other blog as my complaint channel. So is this one actually, only difference is no one's mentioned it. It wasn't meant to be so. I recall smiling with glee as I typed out my initial posts (circa April 05) where stories of the long but not so forgotten past was relived and revealed to all who cared to read.
I realised with a twinge of sadness that the said friend had a point... recent posts have been nothing but complaints or near complaints... from the month of July, to the bashing up of annoying workmates, the hopelessness of the Japanese language to the extinction of turtles. In defence, I vehemently stressed that past posts had rather funny stories (most which happened during the confusing years of teenhood turning unseen pages to adulthood)
Anyway, the friend wanted to know if there were any stories where he was featured. There weren't any, and even as I tried to recall, the only thing that came to mind were games of Bluff and black jack 21 - which a bunch of crazy 19 year olds played a long time ago.
However, he thought that one funny story that involved him was the trip to Desaru which he didn't partake in (that being the funny part). And I thought..."why not?' there were some interesting elements that went with the story...
Desaru Trip - 1999
The cancellation of the Desaru trip by the Choir Club did not deter a bunch of impulsive young people to plan one on their own. They dilligently studied the bus routes (yes, bus routes), modified lyrics to the Dikir Puteri song especially dedicated to desaru, and purchased sunscreen (Turtle brand due to the lack of money)
The 'organisers' were awfully adamant on punctuality. It was important to leave as early as possible. Catch the earliest bus out of the varsity and head on a journey halfway across the state of Johor. Here's where 3 other friends who were initially part of trip got left out. Apparently they woke up late, and had no means of contacting the others (cellphones being a luxury more than a necessity back then) At least that's the story I heard... who knows what could have really happened?

Back to the trip... It was fun even for hydrophobics who just stayed near the beach. An attempt to enter the deep waters of South China Sea resulted in a massive intake of salt water and god knows what else. Card games ruled the rest of the day and a bench which got kissed by all the losers (no money involved in our gambling... just a darn lucky bench)
Food posed another problem. The resort we ended up in (the cheapest of the lot which discontinued several years later!) had rather expensive food. Definately not within our measly student's budgets... So we trudged to a nearby resort and bought packets of instant noodles which were cooked using boiled water from a pathetic 1 L kettle jug.
Our journey back had a slightly different twist. It was much more, lets say -adventurous? In our determination to get there we had rather inconveniently forgotten to find out about getting out of there. The resort provided transport (for 2) but there were 8 of us - supposedly from the neighbouring resort... and we just happened to bump into each other at the beach... yeah, right (grins)
On the bus back we practically had to fight with a bunch of school kids from a nearby boarding school ... Bandar Penawar (I think) and it was strange in a way where the bus driver was also the ticket conductor. It took ages for everything to get settled... the getting on the bus (through the fire exit! - not a normal thing to do, but merely an act of desperation due to the overcrowdedness of the bus), and the buying of the tickets, etc... It was so - 'old town?'.
In conclusion: It is not the activity itself that makes or breaks the vacation, but the journey back and forth and everything in between!